As an iPad 1 owner i’m becoming more and more disillusioned with the App Store. Some great looking titles are emerging but sadly not all are designed to work with my hardware.
So credit then to Namco Bandai and the developers of Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy for not only supporting the device but presenting a truly wonderful game. A game rich with visuals and rich with challenge.
It’s a great pleasure just to control your plane and the sheer satisfaction of gunning down the enemy in the heat of battle is something you don’t get too often in mobile gaming.

With this game you get the real thrills in multiplayer. With announcer comments like “Ultra Kill” and “Rampage” you can see where the developers found their inspiration and the almost instant respawn and tight arena mean that you just don’t get frustrated waiting to rejoin the action.
If you don’t fancy that kind of a dog fight you can pursue the missions. Short and sweet but equally plenty of fun.

I can’t recommend this game highly enough. Well worth the few quid you’ll pay for it and something I imagine you’ll be playing for many weeks or months to come.

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I must confess I have been waiting since day one of owning an iPad to be able to play the likes of Spy Hunter, Joust, Defender and Gauntlet on it. These are the titles that thrilled me as a young teenager in the early 1980s and basically thrust me in to a world of game development.
I remember fondly sitting in the back of my Dad’s car on a family holiday to Scotland sketching out my own designs for a Spy Hunter style game. Having played the real thing in the arcades I was convinced that there could be no finer gaming thrill than gunning down bad guys at high speed.

Gauntlet is a game I’ve written a lot about on here and my previous game development blog. To be able to play it on iPad is a huge thrill. It’s possibly let down by not (for obvious reasons) capturing the raw thrills of 4 friends huddled around the arcade machine but to relive hacking and slashing your way through endless dungeons is just fantastic. The graphics in Gauntlet continue to inspire my own games to this day.

All your favorite arcade hits in the palm of your hand! Lose yourself in this virtual arcade experience featuring 12 popular arcade games from Midway presented in their original cabinet. There’s even a jukebox that lets users play music from their iTunes library and a virtual prize redemption center!

Additional Arcade Hits are available for purchase as game packs.

Game Pack 1 includes:
– NARC
– Total Carnage
– APB

Game Pack 2 includes:
– Gauntlet
– Gauntlet II
– Wizard of Wor

Note: if you are on iPad 1 you may experience a problem with the game crashing at the Warner title screen. To get around this I disabled WiFi – go in to Airplane mode – and then re-enabled it once the arcade was visible.

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For sheer creepiness alone I’d have to say that Closure has kept me busy this week.
In a style that is initially eerily reminiscent of Salad Fingers you get to control a crudly drawn stick figure around a series of platforms. The goal is simple – you find the exit. But in order to do that you have to collect light orbs and walk around with them. If you wander in to the darkness you fall off the platform and plummet to your death :)

It’s inventive, fun and for me quite original.
What’s more I see no reason whatsoever why this style of game couldn’t be made using HTML5 and script. Perhaps we should stop thinking of HTML5 games in terms or Asteroids clones, space shooters, bewjewelled blitz and Sudoku and start to think differently. Games like Closure come from having complete control and confidence in the technology.

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Shogun: Rise of the Renegade

It’s been a while since I had a new shoot ’em up to play and thoroughly enjoy. Last night I downloaded Shogun. The screenshots on the app store looked fantastic. Very reminiscent of the classic Capcom shooters of the 90’s. Full of great colour, bullet madness and cool power-ups.
I really am not disappointed with this game, it’s beautiful to play.

The control system is nice. As with all good shooting games designed for the touch screen you are free to place your finger where you like and the ship will move relative to your finger’s movement. But they’ve added another nice touch which I’d like to see adopted elsewhere and that’s a kind of pause / select menu for your ship’s lasers. The idea is simple in that you swipe your finger around to move the ship then lift your finger away from the glass to engage this mini menu. From there you select your new weapon and you’re back under way with minimal disruption.

I really cannot overstate the quality of the graphics in this game. It really is right up my street. Instantly bringing the awesome Gigawing and 1944: The Loop Master to mind the feel of the game is worthy of the arcades.

If you like big action, big sprites, full colour and generally can’t get enough of Japanese style shoot ’em ups I’d say that Shogun is something you will enjoy. I know I am.

Spice Invaders

Dungeon King

A fantastic Flash based hack and slash RPG game in a similar style to Dungeon Seige or maybe Torchlight. I played about half an hours worth and i’m pretty sure there’s enough in there to keep many a lunch hour going :-) Great fun.